Peteinportland
Interesting article about Thai gay responses to BBM. I have met quite a few gay Thai men. The attitude your Thai friend/s report is most prominent among the many Thai of recent Chinese descent. Their families tend to be very homophobic and I guess it is influenced by traditional Chinese concepts of filial piety. Chinese men are expected to have sons who will continue the worship of the ancestors and provide for their spirits in the afterlife.
Some Thai families of ethnic Thai or Lao descent seem to be a little more relaxed about it. I have met single gay men in their mid to late 30s who successfully resist all attempts by family and matchmakers to marry them off. They often have a don’t ask-don’t tell relationship with their parents and otherwise get on well together. Single gay men often support their parents and build a house for them. Sometimes their siblings seem to know explicitly and accept their brother’s sexuality. I have been invited to stay with partners’ parents’ houses upcountry and been welcomed and put to bed on the same mat under the same mosquito net with their son, though we don’t behave demonstratively when we are with the family. But I have had adult brothers hold my hand and openly cuddle up to me in an affectionate way. The most homophobic attitudes seem to be expressed by Thais who have had some experience of education in the West.
I saw BBM together with my Thai partner in Bangkok. He was very moved by the experience and it prompted him to recall the memory of realising he was gay and feeling very isolated and lonely. I guess he had no-one to talk about it with - he grew up in rural village, lived in a temple in town in order to get a high school education because there was no high school in the village (He and a classmate used to kiss each other without knowing that it was sexual or going any further) and later went to live with his older married brother, a policeman, in Bangkok to pursue his studies. He didn’t know any other gay men in Bangkok.
He was very shocked by the evidence of homophobic violence in BBM and said that it doesn’t exist in Thailand, where violent attacks are motivated by money.
Although he lived for many years in an outer suburb of Bangkok, he had no idea of the existence of gay venues until working as a tourist guide, he organized a taxi for a foreign tourist who directed them to a famous venue.
Soon after we met, he asked me to spend the weekend in his one-room apartment. I accepted and thirteen months later, I’m still here. As soon as we arrived, he called his older brother who invited us to have dinner with him and a police colleague. Older brother took me on the Monday to university departments where he had contacts to find a job. We quite often have family dinners together. Younger brother, a womanising sports teacher in the local primary school, lives in the same building and calls from time to time and we have a drink together. Younger brother often puts his arms round me and says ‘I love you’ to me.
When I moved in with my partner, he rang his mother upcountry to tell her and she wanted to meet me asap. Work commitments meant it was many weeks before we were able to go to the village where I was made welcome by his parents, older and younger brothers and sisters and nieces. We have been back several times and stayed overnight. His parents hold my hand. They ask about my plans, clearly wanting me to stay with my partner. On Father’s Day, I was included in the family ceremony where sons and partners kneel and pay respects to father and receive blessings with holy water and mantras. He gave me his individual blessing too. Later, his father joined my partner’s and my hands together and held them together in his own, smiling broadly. It felt like a traditional European handfasting betrothal. His mother has twice told me about foreigners in the district who are married to Thai women, seeming to imply a parallel. Maybe the pressure is off my partner since his brothers and sisters are married with children and he has contributed a lot to his parents and siblings financially over the years.
My partner and I do not mix in Thai gay circles these days, so I have not had a chance to talk to other gay Thais about BBM. Our respective work commitments don’t bring us into such networks and we live a long way out from places where there are gay restaurants and bars and so on. The overall lack of institutional and legal homophobia means that there is little impetus for setting up or maintaining the kind of gay community organizations and structures that have developed in the West. The fact that BBM was shown in nearly all the mutliplexes and a number of single cinemas here for some weeks shows that it must have had wide appeal to Thais. Exhibitors here very quickly whip off films that don't make money in the first days.
